Despite spending most of my working week sat in front of a computer, I have been spending much of my saturday on my laptop in my front room. While searching for some new fonts, I noticed that ALL the websites shown in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) had the warning “this site may be harmful for your computer”. One of the websites in the list was well known to me, so I knew that it was safe to continue. This took me to a warning page where I had to paste the link of the page into my address bar, as it wouldn’t let me continue any further.
Slightly perplexed as to why this site had been marked as potentially harmful, I checked Google for a few other keywords. Indeed all the websites that appeared in the SERPs (including my own and some well known sites such as the BBC website, the Met Office etc) all had the same warning. The only sites that weren’t marked included YouTube and other Google owned sites.
So it would appear Google’s algorithm for checking the trustworthiness of a website had temporarily gone down - possibly signalling an update or some downtime. It will be interesting to find out what changes were made and how many people were affected during the downtime.
You may already have seen the advert on TV with Samuel Jackson, but Virgin Media have announced their new 50Mb broadband package! This is made possible by optical fibre cables, but also means that for now this service is going to be limited to just a few based on their area.
So what’s so good about 50Mb broadband? Most people can get up to 8Mb connection speeds, so will you notice a big difference? The answer in no uncertain terms is yes. Check out just a few of these statistics:
- Estimated time for downloading a music album in MP3 format is 11 seconds
- Estimated time for downloading a movie is 3 minutes
- Standard videos such as YouTube can be watched with no need to buffer the video
- HD quality video can be streamed online
- Demanding sites will run super fast
- Online gaming performance will be uncomprimised
The connection also allows multiple users to take part in demanding online activities at the same time within a home. This is something I would have very much appreciated in my student days, sharing a 512Kb connection with 3 friends!
The service starts at just £35 a month, although after using the postcode checker I have yet to find an area that supports the service. I have been offered a 20Mb service as an alternative which is fast, but a bit of a shame after they got me so excited about the 50Mb service. I think it’s a great offering, but it will be a while before we all get to enjoy streaming HD videos online.
In a recent government report, it has been announced that every home in the UK will have broadband (or faster) by 2012. Astonishingly, there is still a high percentage of homes (around 25-30%) that don’t have a PC to date. So what does this mean for the internet? Basically it means that websites can be more media rich, with videos, larger / higher quality images etc as well as a much greater level of interactivity.
However the government opposition has announced that it is very disappointed with the report. The report does not highlight any new actions, and compared to the likes of France which is current laying optic fibres for increased broadband speeds (Japan already has it), the speeds predicted for the UK homes is less than the current average of 3.6Mbps at 2Mbps.
Firefox is an internet web browser created by Mozilla. Firefox has always been particularly popular with web developers and designers due to the way in which it renders HTML, compared to the dual rendering engine of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The latest version of Firefox available is currently version 3.
Popularity of Firefox has increased over the years, and although Internet Explorer (IE) is still the primary web browser with approximately 76% of all users browsing the web with IE, it’s popularity is on the rise. The latest version of Firefox has seen increased performance, and a whole host of additional functionality to enhance the users experience.
An important aspect of Firefox is also the ability to install and even create your own plugins / tools to help with your day to day tasks. This is great for webmasters, programmers & developers and SEO programmers, helping to make day to day tasks more efficient.
It seems not even Google are impervious to the recession as they have started tightening their grip on their free Apps. Google’s income growth has slowed considerably, and this is another method of trying to increase revenue following the 100 job cuts and the recent demise of some popular Google products such as Google video and Google Notebook.
Basically there are over a million businesses that use the free version of Google Apps that supports advertising. Google is now reducing the functionality of these accounts, such as lowering the number of user accounts allowed to almost force users into purchasing the premium versions of the applications.
When Google Apps was first launched in 2006, it was completely free. The description of the suite was:
A service available at no cost to organisations of all shapes and sizes
Since then, Google brought out a premier version early in 2007 with additional extras such as additional storage space as the selling point. Eventually the future of Google Apps is that it will become a premium service.
When discussing this with my colleagues, the initial reaction was that they would stop using Google Apps and just use i.e. Microsoft. However, the beauty of Google Apps is the collabarative element that allows multiple users to work from the same document. As Google further tightens it’s grip, perhaps we will look onto other free online applications?
